April 15, 1986 Reagan bombed Libya and I an enlisted young man in the US Army.  It was a Monday when President Reagan decided to retaliate against Libya for the bombing of a Berlin dancing establishment that was noted for American service men's attendance.  This and other incidents forced President Reagan's valiant retaliation.

I knew something was different when without warning and in the dead of a fierce Colorado winter, our unit mobilized all of its track elements and chained them to rail cars for a long distance deployment.  We had only done this once before; and that is when we sent all of our tracked vehicles to Germany for huge military exercise called REFORGER, I forget what the acronym means because the US Military has acronyms for everything and anything that moves or stays still, dead or alive.  This whole mess was done on a weekend.  A military at peace does not do anything on weekends because America finds weekends to be a sacred time off for men, women, and their families.

My girlfriend at the time had grown accustom to having me around on weekends but understood when she saw me dressed like a green-camoed Eskimo and trudge out the door of our apartment only to come back late at night Friday, Saturday and Sunday a frozen-nasty-grease-stain of a soldier.  Something was different but we did not know what.  As we were dismissed Monday afternoon early, our commanding staff ordered us to be ready for all married and not married to stay in the barracks Tuesday and through the rest of the week.  On my way home thinking of all the crap that I had to gather, the car radio announced that Reagan had just struck Libya with F-111 bombers and I put together everything that we had just done with what had just happened.  The rest of the night, Michelle and I watched what we could before the dawn of cable news networks to hear what was going on.  Cronkite was gone, so I didn't know who to trust.  In reality, we trusted all of those Liberal Lefty talking heads back then but too much had happened not to ward off a fight from that cowboy Reagan!

As Michelle and I went to bed, the song "Season In The Sun" played in my head over and over again until I went to sleep with a tear streaming out of my eye.  I was scared beyond any fear that I ever knew up until that time in my life.  I was so scared but never did the thought of not going enter my mind.  I knew why we were fixing to fight Islam and the Libyans and whomever was wanting to fight us in the Middle East back in 1986.

The problem in the Middle East will never be resolved until the people of the Middle East, Islam, and surrounding nations resolve to quit fight each other and everyone else in the world for what ever reason they conjure.  That thought will occur to them only when a surrender of Islam is established; anything else means that America and the free world will never know peace.  Until Islam surrenders in the same manner as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan surrendered, our future nor our children will ever have their season in the sun.